The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Here’s the problem with releasing a coupon on the internet: without disclaimers or digital limits on the coupon itself, it can be infinitely reproduced, used over and over, and used by people it wasn’t intended for. That’s what reportedly happened when T-Mobile offered a restriction-free coupon for $7 worth of stuff at PetSmart as part of its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion that was a little too unrestricted.

The coupon for T-Mobile customers, Coupons in the News explains, was a PDF uploaded on PetSmart’s site. T-Mobile’s app took customers there, but here was the problem: you didn’t have to be a T-Mobile customer to see the file. Or download it. Or print it out.

Worse, since unique barcodes weren’t generated for each customer, and the coupon could theoretically be used infinite times. Instead of using one coupon per account, customers reported seeing non-customers going through the line over and over, using “$7 off a purchase of $7 or more” coupons to score free pet supplies as long as they cost less than $7.

As often happens with unrestricted coupons like this, deals forums noticed. While T-Mobile is a growing carrier, we’re going to guess that all of the people shown standing in line at a Petsmart store in this photo are not T-Mobile customers.